by Julia James
Again, Nikos deliberately said nothing.
Not even as his father headed back to his own office, adding, ‘And for God’s sake don’t tell your mother. That’s all I need.’
What you need, thought Nikos grimly, is a divorce.
But that wouldn’t happen, he knew. His parents were locked in their bitter, destructive dance, circling round each other like snarling dogs, biting at each other constantly.
That’s why I’ve stayed clear of long-term relationships. So I’ll never get trapped in an ugly, destructive relationship the way my parents have.
Moodily, he jackknifed out of his chair, striding across the office to stare out over the streets of Athens below. Thoughts, dark and turbid, swirled in his mind.
He didn’t want to be here, staring out over the city of his birth, working himself senseless, just to block his mind from thinking about what he did want—which was to be somewhere utterly different.
With Mel.
He shut his eyes, swearing fluently and silently inside his head. He was off again, thinking about Mel—wanting her...wanting her so badly it was a physical pain.
But she was gone—gone, gone, gone. She had walked out on him and she’d been right to walk out on him—that was what was so unbearable for him to face. Mel had done exactly what would have happened anyway, a few days later—ended their affair. It had been just as he had planned it to be—transient, temporary, impermanent.
Safe.
Safe from the danger he’d always feared. That one fine day he’d find himself doing what his father had just done—walking in and snapping and snarling, berating and bad-mouthing the woman he was married to.
His eyes opened again, a bleak expression in them. He could hear his father’s condemnation of his mother still ringing in his ears. Together or apart, they still laid into each other, still tore each other to pieces. The venom and hostility and the sheer bloody nastiness of it all...
They couldn’t be more different from the way Mel and I were together...
Into his head thronged a thousand memories—Mel laughing, smiling, teasing him with an amused, affectionate glint in her eye at his foibles—him teasing her back in the same vein,—both of them at ease with each other, companionable, comfortable, contented...
Contented.
The word shaped itself in his head. He’d used it in Bermuda—trying to find the right word to match his feelings then.
Contented.
That had been the word—the right word...
Me and Mel. Mel and me.
Because it wasn’t just the passion that had seared between them—incandescent though that had been—it was more, oh, so much more than that.
His mind went to his parents. They were always complaining about each other, with lines of discontent, displeasure, disapproval around their mouths, with vicious expressions in their eyes when they spoke to each other, spoke of each other to him.
Nothing, nothing like the way he and Mel had been.
He felt his body tense, every honed muscle engaging, as he stared out of the window—not seeing what was beyond the glass, not seeing anything except a vision of Mel’s face. Beautiful beyond all dreams, but with an expression that was far, far beyond beauty to him. She was smiling at him, with a softness in her eyes, a warmth—an affection that reached out to him and made him want to reach out to her. To cup her face and drop a kiss on the tip of her nose, then tuck her hand in his, warm and secure, and stroll with her, side by side, along the beach, chatting about this or that or nothing at all, easy and happy, contented, towards the setting sun...
All the days of my life...
And into his head, into his consciousness, slowly, like a swimmer emerging from a deep, deep sea, the realisation came to him.
It doesn’t have to be like my parents’ relationship. I don’t have to think that will happen. Mel and I aren’t like that. We’re nothing like that. Nothing!
He could feel the thoughts shaping inside his head, borne up on the emotion rising within him. If that were so, then he could take the risk—should take the risk—the risk he had always feared to take. Because never had he met a woman who could take that fear from him.
As if a fog had cleared from his head, taking away the occluding mist that had clouded his vision all his life, he felt the realisation pierce him.
Mel can—Mel can lift that fear from me.
That was what he had to trust. That was what he had to believe in.
What we had was too good—far too good to let go of. Far too good to cut short, fearing what it might become in years to come. I refuse to believe that she and I would ever become like my parents. I refuse to believe that the time we had together—that brief, inadequate time—couldn’t go on for much longer. Not weeks, or months—but years...
His breath seemed to still in his lungs.
All my days...
For one long, breathless moment he stood there, every muscle poised, and then, as if throwing a switch, he whirled around, turned on his heel and strode back to his desk. His eyes were alight—fired with determination, with revelation, with self-knowledge.
She might not want him—she might be halfway around the world by now—she might turn him down and spurn him, go on her laughing, footloose way, but not before he found her again and put to her the question that was searing in his head now. The question he had to know the answer to...
Snatching up the phone on his desk, he spoke to his secretary.
‘Get me our security agency, please—I need to start an investigation. I need—’ he took a hectic breath ‘—to find someone.’
* * *
The plane banked as it started its descent into Heathrow. Mel felt herself tilting, and again the sensation of nausea rose inside her. She damped it down. It had started when they’d hit a pocket of turbulence mid-Atlantic, but they would be on the tarmac soon—then she’d feel better.
Physically, at least.
Mentally, she didn’t feel good in the slightest. She felt as if a pair of snakes were writhing, fighting within her—two opposing emotions, twisting and tormenting her. Her face tightened. Her features pulled taut and stark. She had an ordeal in front of her. An ordeal she didn’t want but had to endure. Had to face.
This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.
A holiday romance—that was all she’d ever intended Nikos to be. A brief, glorious fling—then off on her travels as she’d planned for so long. Happy and carefree. On her own.
Travels had turned out to be nothing—to be ashes—without Nikos at her side to share them with.
It wasn’t supposed to have been like that...
Missing him so much...
Missing him...missing him all the time—wherever she went, wherever she’d gone. Just wanting to be with him again. Anywhere in the world...so long as it was with him...
How could she have been so unbearably stupid as to walk out on him? He’d asked her to go with him to Athens and she’d refused.
I could have had more time...more time with him...
Yet even as the cry came silently and cruelly within her she heard her own voice answer the one inside her head—even more cruel.
How much more time? A week? A month? And then what? When the holiday romance burned itself out? When he finally didn’t want you any more because all he wanted was an affair...? Nothing permanent. Nothing binding between them.
She heard again in her head his warning to her that horrible, horrible morning in Bermuda when she’d walked out and gone to the airport to fly to New York alone.
‘What had you in mind? I made it clear, right from the start, that I was only talking about a few weeks together at the most...’
A hideous, hollow laugh sounded inside her. A few weeks? Oh, dear God, now she had the means to be with him, to keep him in he
r life, for far longer than a few weeks...
A permanent, perpetual bond between them.
Her features twisted.
No, it wasn’t supposed to have been like this at all.
I wasn’t supposed to fall for him.
She swallowed the nausea rising in her throat again.
I wasn’t supposed to get pregnant...
CHAPTER TEN
NIKOS EXITED THE brand-new office building, heading for the car that waited for him at the kerb. He glanced up at the sky between the tall serried ranks of modern office blocks in downtown Hong Kong. The clouds had massed even more, and the humid air had a distinct chill to it. The wind was clearly rising. The local TV channel had been full of news of an impending typhoon, speculating on whether it would hit the island or not.
Back at his hotel, he noticed that the typhoon warning notice had gone up a level. His mouth set. He still had more meetings lined up, but they might have to be postponed if the weather worsened. Once a typhoon hit in force the streets would be cleared of traffic, the subway shut down and the population kept indoors until it was safe to go out again.
From his suite at the top of the towering hotel, with its view over the harbour, he could see the grey water, choppy and restless, and watched frowningly as ocean-going ships came in from the open sea beyond to seek shelter from the ferocious winds that were starting to build. The way things were going, it was more than likely his flight back to London would be cancelled.
Frustration bit at him. The last thing he wanted was to be stuck here in Hong Kong with a typhoon threatening!
He forced himself to be rational. He’d set the security agency he used for personal protection to the task of tracking down the woman he had to locate—and that would take time. Even as he thought this a memory darted with piquant power—the memory of his first evening with Mel, bantering with her about how she should take a bodyguard with her on her travels to keep all predatory males away from her...
How long ago that seemed—and yet also as if it were only yesterday...
Automatically, he checked his mobile and email—still nothing from the agency. With a vocal rasp, he got stuck back into his work yet again.
Patience—that was what he needed. But he wasn’t in the mood to be patient. Not in the slightest.
* * *
The tube train taking Mel into the City, towards the London offices of the Parakis Bank, was crowded and airless. She felt claustrophobic after the wide-open spaces of America, and she was dreading the ordeal that lay in front of her.
She should have phoned first, she knew, but she hadn’t been able to face it. Nikos probably wasn’t even in London now—why should he be? But maybe she could talk to his PA, find out where he was, how best to get in touch with him. At worst she could leave the painfully written letter she’d got in her bag. Telling him what she had to tell him...
She’d written it last night, rewriting it over and over again, trying to find the right words to tell him. The right words to tell him the wrong thing. That their holiday romance had ended in a way that neither of them could possibly have foreseen. That neither could possibly have wanted.
Yet even as she thought it she could feel emotion rising up in her—feel the conflict that had tormented her since her first shocked and disbelieving discovery of what had happened. Conflict that had never abated since—that was going round and round and round in her head, day and night.
What am I going to do? What am I going to do?
The train glided to a halt at another station and the doors slid open. More people got off. Then the doors slid shut and the train started forward again, out of the lighted platform area and back into yet another tunnel. Stop, start, stop again, start again—over and over. And still the words went round and round in her head.
What am I going to do? What am I going to do?
She was pregnant, with an unplanned baby, by a man who had only been a holiday romance. That was the stark truth of it.
It was the very last thing she had ever thought would happen.
She heard her own words, spoken so casually, so confidently, at the charity dinner Nikos had taken her to—their very first date.
‘Right now, a baby is definitely not on my agenda.’
All she’d wanted was the freedom to indulge her wanderlust—finally, after so many years of looking after her grandfather. She hadn’t wanted more ties, more responsibilities.
Other words cut into her mind. Not hers this time. Nikos—talking as they’d walked away from that mismatched couple at the conference hotel. Telling her bitterly how his parents had become warring enemies.
‘When I came along everything went pear-shaped.’
That was what he had said. Showing her his scars—his fears. His determination never to risk what had happened to his parents happening to him.
And now, thanks to her, that was what was facing him.
Her features twisted and emotion stabbed at her like a knife...a tormenting, toxic mix of dismay, fear, doubt and fierce, primitive protectiveness...
What am I going to do? What am I going to do?
Round and round the question circled in her tired, exhausted brain, with no answer at all.
The train pulled into yet another station, and with a start Mel realised she should have changed lines at the previous one. Hastily she pushed her way off, pausing on the platform to look around for directions to the line she needed. As she was staring about the large lettering on the advert plastered to the curved wall in front of her suddenly caught her eye.
Pregnant? Unsure?
Overwhelmed? Confused?
Her gaze focussed instantly, and the words below resolved themselves into sense in her brain.
Talk to us in complete confidence for help to find your way forward.
Beneath was the name of a charity she had been vaguely familiar with in her student days, but had never had need to pay any attention to.
Until now.
She stared, repeating the words of the advert inside her head. Unsure...overwhelmed...confused? Dear God, she was all of those, all right. Her eyes drifted to the address given on the advert, registering that it was nearby.
Her grip tightened on her suitcase and with a jerk she started to head towards the escalators.
Oblivious of the quietly dressed man doing likewise a little way behind her...
Fifteen minutes later she was seated, hands clenched with tension, in a consulting room at the charity’s walk-in offices.
‘You really should take longer to think this through.’ The woman talking to Mel spoke with a warm, sympathetic, but cautious tone.
‘I have thought it through—I’ve thought it through over and over again...ever since I found out I was pregnant. It’s the only thing I’ve been thinking about.’
Mel’s voice was stressed. She had poured everything out, tumbled and conflicted and anguished, and the trained counsellor had listened quietly and attentively. Then she had spelt out to Mel the options that were available—the choices she could make.
As Mel had listened she had felt her heart grow heavier and heavier at the answer to the question that was tormenting her—that had tormented her ever since she had stared, disbelieving, at the blue line on the pregnancy test kit.
She looked across at the counsellor, her expression strained, but there was a resolve in her eyes that had not been there before.
‘My mind is made up,’ she said. ‘That’s my decision. My baby—my responsibility for what happens.’
She got to her feet. Once more a slight wave of nausea bit at her, and she swallowed it down.
The counsellor had stood up, too.
‘I am always here,’ she said, her voice kind, ‘if you feel you want to discuss this further...talk things through again.’
But Mel shook her head. ‘Thank you—but, no. I know what I’m going to do.’ She gave a difficult smile. ‘Thank you for your time. It’s been...’ she took a breath ‘...invaluable. You’ve helped me to reach the answer I needed to find.’
She held out a hand, shook the counsellor’s briefly and made her way back out on to the street. Her pace, as she headed off, was determined. Resolute. But her tread felt as heavy as her heart.
As she headed back to the tube station she got out the letter she’d written so painfully the night before. Tearing it in two, she dropped it in a litter bin. Then she went back down into the Underground. This time taking the direction away from the City.
Away from Nikos’s offices.
There was nothing to tell him now. Nothing at all.
Her mind was clear on that.
Finally the writhing snakes that had tormented her had ceased their endless conflict.
Her baby was hers and hers alone.
And as she sat carefully down on a seat in the tube train her hand crept to her abdomen, spreading across gently. Protectively.
* * *
Nikos threw himself into his first-class seat on the plane as they boarded in Hong Kong, relief filling him. Finally he was on his way back to Europe. The typhoon had hit, just as he’d feared, and all flights had been cancelled. Now, though, the delayed flights were resuming and he was headed for London.
But he still didn’t know where Mel was. His investigators had drawn a blank—and in a way he wasn’t surprised. Because how did you locate someone who was one of thousands of tourists?
He’d told the agency about the sandwich bar she’d worked in, in case that might help. Maybe her former employer could shed some light on where she was right now? Hadn’t Mel said that Sarrie was the uncle of a friend of hers?
And there was a possibility that she might be traceable by checking out the former address details of anyone with her surname who had died the previous year in North London, to see if they could locate the address of her late grandfather’s house. If they could, then maybe the estate agents handling the tenancy had contact details for Mel?
